Re: Farwell Beep Beep

MadFatMan said:I am so glad that the days of listening to people beeping in walmart at full volume has come to a close

gloopey1 said:... Seriously, where are the complaints from these same people about traditional two-way Radios, which are just as loud and have constant chatter going on all the time? Just about every big store uses them, and none have privacy features.

There is no doubt that when Nextel had 16,000,000 customers and Boost had another 3,000,000, there were a lot more full-volume PTT conversations to be heard.

That said, the problem was the clueless/inconsiderate individuals using the devices in that way. Nextel went to great lengths to make certain the PTT conversations could be silenced easily & quickly, and encouraged considerate behavior. It is unfortunate that so many individuals mis-used the technology, thus irritating large numbers of the general public and creating a negative impression of PTT.

As gloopey1 mentioned above, there are still a lot of in-store walkie-talkies used by the personnel of large chains, and to that point I would add that there are a ton of individuals loudly & inconsiderately using their iPhones & Android smartphones in speakerphone mode in public spaces. Back in Nextel's heyday, most other cell-phones had no speakerphone capability, so the majority of the public kept their flip-phones/bar-phones pressed against their ears...they had no other choice. Now that all other manufacturers have included speakerphone capability in non-PTT handsets, the general population has begun using them in public, just as cluelessly & inconsiderately as any former Nextel PTT user. Which illustrates that the problem is the people using it, not the fault of a given technology.

There certainly is a place for PTT capability, and it was nice that Motorola & Nextel developed to be the bulletproof & useful system it was. It is equally unfortunate that some individuals used it incorrectly & inconsiderately to the point of alienating others. But those inconsiderate users did not vanish when Nextel began it's decline, they just moved to AT&T or Verizon and continued being clueless with smartphones in speakerphone mode, or holding up traffic when the light turns green, because their eyes are glued to their screen while they text.